Turning 60: This Thing Called Duchin

Posted by Mike Finnegan
on
June 21, 2016

Done with adept casting and
respectful celebration of their subject’s musical legacy, bandleader
biographies enjoyed a certain vogue in the 1950s from Clifton Webb in the John
Philip Sousa chronicle Stars and Stripes
Forever (1952) to James Stewart in The
Glenn Miller Story (1954) and Steve Allen in the title role of The Benny Goodman Story (1956). Though
each played around with the facts, they also benefitted from great selections
from the American songbook and in the case of the latter two, best-selling
soundtrack albums with Maestro Goodman playing his own clarinet parts in his
“life story.” Because another such figure was so revered by people in New York
and Hollywood social circles and his own story covered the beats of tragedy and
triumph that could make a compelling movie, canny producer Jerry Wald and
Columbia Pictures took a flyer on a romanticized, lavishly tuneful portrait of
a keyboardist and bandleader who also added luster to the 1930s and 1940s music
scene. Marking the 60th anniversary of its premiere today, The Eddy Duchin Story (1956)
had glamorous stars, a marvelous period sheen in gorgeous Technicolor and
Cinemascope, and likely got an unconscious boost from the popularity of another
Duchin-like musical marvel who at the time was charming television viewers with
class, flash and pianistic virtuosity, Liberace. Tyrone Power was a good friend
of Duchin’s (reportedly Power, Cary Grant and Van Johnson were all interested
in the part) and he gave the title role his all, devoting intensive weeks of
rehearsal to master the “fingering” of some 20 Duchin standards so that he
could convincingly put across the numbers actually played on the soundtrack by
the accomplished, Duchin-inspired Carmen Cavallaro. Duchin’s life had elements ripe
for dramatization: struggling early years, dazzling early success, a loving
marriage curtailed by childbirth tragedy, World War II service, family
fragmentation, career resurgence, tentative reconciliation, and life-curtailing
terminal illness. The cheers and tears generated by the up- and downturns of
the plot were cushioned by a soothing pop-melody cavalcade of 20+ standards in
the vein of What Is This Thing Called
Love?, Blue Moon, The Man I Love, Till We Meet Again, La Vie en Rose, Ain’t She
Sweet, Shine on, Harvest Moon, Let’s Fall in Love, April Showers and
Duchin’s owntheme adapted from
Chopin’s Nocturne in E-Flat Major. Directed
by the versatile George Sidney, and also starring Kim Novak and Victoria Shaw
as Duchin’s first and second loves, James Whitmore, Shepperd Strudwick, Freida
Inescort and Gloria Holden, the movie was Columbia’s top earner that year and
the soundtrack album also scored huge sales. However true or false the dramatic
details may be (and Duchin’s son Peter, who followed in his dad’s footsteps as
a world renowned pianist/bandleader, expressed dismay at much of what ended up
on screen), the melodies linger and the tears are well-earned 60 years later in
The
Eddy Duchin Story, lovingly preserved on Twilight Time hi-def Blu-ray.